Lips

You open your eyes
Your mouth is light
A perfect round orb
In this land of starkness
I know your disguise
The silent humming at night
Your lips eclipse
I'm left in darkness.

Haven't Seen

I haven't seen the stars in the sky in Rome
Haven't seen Turkey's blue and golden domes
Haven't seen a route called 66 stretching on like truth
But I have seen you and I think you'll do.

I haven't seen the colours dry on Italy's walls
Haven't pointed to David & Goliath in hallowed halls
Haven't seen London's cobbled streets or Jack's bloody letter
But I've seen you and I think you're better.

I haven't seen the ruins of Pompeii washed by fires of the mountains
Haven't seen glass meet stone at the Louvre or nature's fountains
I haven't seen the towers of Dubai scrape the sky
But I've seen you and you make me smile.

I haven't seen the locks the lovers in Germany tied to a bridge
Haven't seen the Grand Canyon or its stony ridge
Haven't seen Mayan ruins held by the clouds up above
But I see you now and I think you're enough.

Long

It's been too long for longing
Too late for waiting
And you'd rather hum,
"I speak too soon,
I think too fast."
The milk boiled, burned, over spilled
Stained your skin
The clouds that loom above her head
Never rain
The stars, like your home,
gather dust.
Send me the miles you've travelled,
Send me the sky, the moon, the earth
Send me all you've seen from up high
Send me a photograph of your smile
Crooked teeth by crooked steps
Send me the rain of your city
And the only shade of green you know
If you cannot send these postcards
Send me away.

Silent muse, violent ruse
Tarred old clues
To a mystery never solved
You know the ways of the world
You have a way with words
Said no one ever, but
I'll still tell you all
Till I end up tripping over
My own sound
Sounds, you know those things
No one can save, but I try
As i try dancing
with your shadow
Singing when no one's around
And sure, you say you like poetry
Like a man with three wives
And know the names of paintings from
France, dating back to the 19th century
A time, you wish was yours
A time, where you wish you belonged
But here you are
And there, I see
Me in your mirror
Left writing this fucking poem
Again as another century turns,
yawns and begins
Like just another day
In your book kept out of
Reach on a shelf, know this -
you're a photograph with no caption.

Keys

I feel forgotten 
Lost 
Misplaced
Like keys in a bowl 
You kept too high,
Out of reach
Like keys that lead to 
Locks that open doors 
You've closed for good
Like keys, with crooked teeth gone
Brittle with time

Regard

I have little regard
For sharp things
And 
Hidden objects

One stings
The other laughs.

I want nothing

I want nothing to do
With my hands,my feet
And my eyes
I'd rather lose
My sight, my scent
My sum, my sound
Than my words

I've forgotten how it feels
When someone touches the back of 
Your neck, the front of your chest
The end of your palm
Or what you see when you close your 
Eyes and kiss
I imagine only darkness
This storm is calm 
And the waves are still

And that perhaps, is
The worst death of all
The being alone
In happiness

With the night

All day
I keep waiting 
To be with the night
To forget the parties 
Of the day
To kiss and hold her tight

All the while
I'm killing time 
The light will never
know my name
I hide what I should seek 
I let go of these reins

All these moments
Photographs of colours
Washed and turned inside out
Hung to dry while she hums
"Music is made of cowards
and silence is a crowd."

Tongue

I bit my tongue
while I was sleeping
Woke with one hand behind my head
Like I left my pillow back home
Another on my face
For the sun was in my eyes
And I, in the shade 
Where time lay still
And the birds were quiet
In all this silence, I
couldn't hear you speak 
Even though your teeth were shining
And you hands were dancing 
As the paper waves receded
Into the fold
But it stings a little, as I wake
I bit my tongue while I was sleeping
I was dreaming of you

#99

Wrong out your rights
Wound all your heals
Drown out the noise
Erase how to feel
This second skin
We've settled in
Is better than
Anything

The Better Half

Crawl through mud and ash
Empires long forgotten
To reach
The better half of me
I prefer the tall grass 
And the wind whistling through
But I'm not divided in two
There are open fields,
Mountains of green
Where my mind wanders, and you
And maybe I prefer doors that 
Say welcome 
Even though you never open
Or bat an eyelid
When I sing and dance
Perhaps
The better half of me
Is me

I would like to meet you
But meet you from a distance 
We don't have to embrace or kiss
Like you say lovers did
Off of a postcard from New York stuck 
At the back of your bedroom door
The sailor's hat in the wind
Your hair dances 
Your feet, too small 
Like your hands 
But I don't see the lines 
Or the spilt mascara and overturned 
Eyelashes, the eyes are out of business,
the doors are still and closed 
Even if from a distance 
They seem open and inviting 
So you invite me for a walk
Then say you haven't got
the time to walk this line
And slip like shifting sands from dunes
Of the night, you blow smoke rings
And wouldn't like to sing
Or even gallop to a place
Far away, a city eroding by the sea
to see two walls going by
Across, parallel
Never to touch

One with the fading

When it rains
But the drops don't touch you
you can't seem to see
Your reflection in the mirror
Or in a puddle, the children splash about
Or even in the spoon, in your tea
You stir a storm
But nothing twists and turns
You can't recall when you
Erased yourself from your own page
In the diary of life
From the footnotes of others
The ink has dried
You're one with the fading

Frame

She moves in frames
The photo stays the same
As time goes by
It's hard to recall her name

Waiting in the shadows 
Aching for the pour to stop
In the eyes there's only rain
The heart shelters a drought

She said she'd rather not see
The other side of me
So I locked the doors
And threw away the key

She said one's a lonely sum
If only that were untrue
I need you like breadcrumbs, she said
Once the bread is through 

Flowers

Picture by Shreya Arya. Words by me.

#100

If there were three things I could do today,
They would be to burn
To burn and to burn.

Burn like the sun of a new day that sets the sky alight
Burn like the fires that keep burning even when it's raining

Many things in your life are as cold and stale as a limp dick
And the winter of your youth will never return
So keep burning

Burn like narendra modi just started eating beef
Burn like its watermelon season
Burn like the chillies are fresh
Burn like you were on fire like that one Vietnamese priest on the cover of rage against the machine's first album
Burn like Tom Morello's guitar chords on a pair of fresh strings

Burn like the cities inside of you are burning
And people are having sex on top of cars left behind on the road
And even though there are cops everywhere you aren't following the fucking curfew hours to go home because you'd rather burn

Burn down those who say you weren't man enough
Burn away those that say you're too much of a woman
Burn because you don't need to bow
Burn because you don't need permission

Burn, for you can withstand it
Burn, because your canvas is candid
And though I haven't planned it
When you burn
I won't leave you stranded.

Burn like the streets are empty
Burn like there's no music but
You're dancing anyway
Burn like you're dancing naked
Burn like everyone's watching you like a comet that comes by only once every 75 years

Burn like your parents are away
Burn like your plate is full
Burn like your grandparents used to get high
Burn and carve your name on this world
Forget about who offended you
Write an open letter to yourself
Stop being faceless on Facebook
Trendy on Twitter or tumbling over tumbler
Burn, as only you know how

If there were four things I could do today
They would be to burn, to burn, to burn
And to heal.

I would like to kiss you in
Places no one knows
In secrets nothing has
Touched in a while
The way you know you like
But no one knows

I would like to kiss you
In corners of the places
Where you grew up
Changed shape and
Shed your skin

I would like to kiss you
In your sleep
So you may dream of me
I wish that were true
Like your hands that manage
To defy gravity and curve
When you put your fingers
To your lips

I would like to kiss you
When you are looking away
So you may turn to me
And smile

Fluff

Mountains of the evening
Hills of the night
White cushions with
No ill intent
Break in the morning
To deliver and drench
You with their message
While we, the plebeians
The crawlers
Seedy shifters and
Cheque chasers
Full of words
Drained of cash
Leave home

Undress

I see her undress
Under the moon
And for a second
The things become
Clear
The ink spilled over her
Skin in youth
Marks long forgotten
The golden hoops
For silver ears
And freckles like stars
Illuminate the night
Love is a smile
She wears

It's A Slow Death

I'm flesh and bone
Blood and guts 
Root and hair
Alphabets are leaves I shed
The autumn draft
During winter spells
The everyday seasons 
The sun never sets
And you'd agree
I'm not made of letters
But my darling
Its a slow death
When they want only your words
And your body lies forgotten
It's a dull pain
That time reminds and hangs like 
Clothespins from your skin
It's an ungentle ache
When the only curves and shapes
They yearn for
Are the ones they can hear
Coming out of your mouth
The only thing they'd like to undress
Is a page left blank

Irony

The universe abounds in irony
I lost my key chain
And found the key

Golden

Those who rest
In golden spires
Cannot see rivers of blood
Or eyes of fire

Those who dine
With mouths open wide
Live to be devoured 
By a ravenous tide

Pumping your fist, beating your chest
Wearing your crown of power
Shouting your forsaken sermon
From a broken tower

If your body's a vessel
Your heart's but a cage
Bring down your armies
Have you come to plunder?
Or have you come to save?

And they keep marching on and on
With red, the only paint for my town
Your beauty parlours are full of politicians
Our Parliament is full of clowns

Causality is just a statistic 
War makes humans rhetoric
This is elected disease is already passé
But when I get to scratching 
I'll savour every itch

So mothers, don't count your martyrs
Your hands are open wide
Fathers shed no tears
Pray to an empty sky

The usual tale of travesty
The jury looks from left to right
Our fifteen decades of tragedy
Assured through media bytes

And what of the solitary pawn
Left alone with jigsaw rubble and rags
The earth is a wound, calm as a bomb
Clutch the dust that doesn't hold you back.

But can you forget that face you once held,
When there are no birds left to sing her summer song
Remorse is a product they try to sell when
The kings and queens and all the horses are gone

Because the guilty won't fall
From their high throne
Because they couldn't find
The hands that slit her throat
Today in the evening, city square
A man is going to explode.

Live

I want to live where the road runs out
Where the grass is wild and no one's about
Where voices are vices and silence's a cloud
To build an abode in nature's shroud.

I want to live where the river flows free
Where dreams are whispers and the world is a sea.
Between the lost and found
From the corner of down and out
I want to run to every mountain and climb every tree.

I want to be where freedom is not a decree
Where there are no cages and the bird is singing with glee
A song for the forsaken, the fallen and me
To know my muse has awoken
And my muse is free.

From the ocean of deceit to the valley of truth
I want to travel to a place with every shade of green and blue
Where we come to for the stories but stay for the view
I want to give everything away and be something new.

I will not wait for you

I will not wait for you
or your eyes that never turn
for the world is a wheel
And you only gather hate like dust
sweeping forgotten toys under your bed.

I don't mind
If your hands are not reaching out
For me
If your arms don't graze
The grass on this field
My feet tramples with joy
If your palms aren't waves
That take me in
And little by little,
We all must forget

For the sky to open
to see walls crumble and broken
to feel the heat of the wave
before the cold hits.

For I decline
The things that shine
For a thousand names they recall
For stretching sleeves of my hand
For uncertain shelters

Once I know
I'm nothing new
I will not wait for you
but if your eyes do wander
towards the roads I made

Know I am but an empty sky
Bereft of pregnant clouds
a string-less kite
your fingers point nowhere.
But
In your resolve
my chains are broken
in your gaze
my solace grows weak.

Palette

Lady with palette of
elaborate tastes
colour my hours with your shade.
Your hair scattered like words
by the shore
and all the letters come rushing in
like pieces of crooked giants
crumbling at your feet.
And I, with my legs of clay
wait for the waves to simmer
like the storm in your teacup
as you close your lips
to wish the summer away.
And inching closer
to the cold taking over
I try and write a poem
for your eyes.
When I’d rather be
kissing you
hiding behind an old couch
by the window
of your crumbling house.

The Drowning

I close the door
The voices outside have drowned
It’s time I must sleep
A deep, trembling sleep
For the sun was getting too loud.

Words are never far
From where you are.

But I bid farewell to
The smiling, squinting eyes
That stray from me
The face of yesterdays
That called out in the breeze
Forsaken and lost,
Just a fever dream.

Do you lay down your armour
Or do you simmer and burn?
But tonight you recede sans waves
Silence fits you like a glove.

Don’t you know I’ve been counting
All the suns and moons left in my days
The wealth of past is never abounding
You can be the light, or
You can be the shade.

What shall I do to seek your shadows
Though your reflections are oft’ in my view
Evening moon and the midnight flower
Twixt both, and I have you.

And so, I close the door as,
The song is done
And though adrift
I stand before you
Naked to the bone.

Maybe we’re all stuck in silent motion
And maybe the rock
That sinks in the ocean
Is just a stone.

Morsel

Little girl
You don’t have to cut or heal
As the waves along the shore
Erode my feet.

Time is a passing thing
You don’t have to crack
Every mirror
As you stare at wishes
For an open window.

Don’t be a culprit
They always leave a mark
Of things to come.
Or whisper gently in my ears
“Find me when you wake.”

Change is just a yellow leaf
Falling to the ground.
And I, too, turn into you
As the summer sun
Brings back colour
To both your eyes.

Your body is but a burning flame
Why don’t you just
Keep dancing
As you put on your clothes
However
Do it slow.

I

Here I am
Dressed in the sleeve of a gifted shirt
Muttering words, too fast, in a language you cannot fathom
Hair tousled in the wind, hands waving
Wearing a smile borrowed from an old photograph
Legs thinner than before.

There you lie
Never too far but always at a distance
Forever moving a little bit too quick
And yet, slowing down time
Whispering through a half smile
Like the sun about to rise
From my window
Almost a perfect circle,
She dances.

Here I stand
Building a wall
With each brick, a memory of
No one.
Stealing the night from her eyes
Spinning in the circle
Of perennial dress rehearsal
Adorned with tatters of yesterday
This circus grows vile.

And behind the empty canvas of every mask
Your eyes are open cages
With singing birds
Your words are roads going nowhere
Your mouth, a lake with depths unknown
Even though your tongue is still
But your hands are doors that never open
As you watch me
Watching you
Dangle the world
From your keychain.

Anything/Anyone

It was one of those nights where anything would do.

'Anything'. He repeated to himself in his head. He lied. He meant 'anyone'.

But there he was. Watching amovie with an imdb rating of 6.6 instead of his usual 7+ douchey unexplaining hard to pronounce titles that'd usually turn out to be lame and leave him more confused than sad. However, sweating profusely fighting sleep to stay awake whilst watching this flick that had seemingly slipped by time itself, itsubtly inflated his own ego to challenge his ocd-like temperament with mundane things.

Like not stepping on stone tile boundaries while walking on a pavement and not checking if the door is locked for the fourth time before masturbating, it subtly pleased him.

26. That number shouldn't matter. But it had been drilling a tiny hole, nay a tunnel from deep inside of him like a pesky woodpecker trapped within the confines of his frail body. He wished it would never come out. He hated that motherfucking woodpecker.

Crooked

Her teeth are crooked skylines of a forgotten city,
Against the summer sun
That goes down and doused in shadows,
All is quiet.

In my mind, there are only mirrors.
And every photo is black and white.
When she smiles,
The colours return.

I put the lamp away and put myself on fire
Things that burn are hard to reach
That is why her eyes stray
Seeking cold shades and warm shelters
Unlike my arms, charred and red
From holding you.

All my paper crowns are ashes
And the empty banks are flooded
With tales of the old.
So by the sleeve of an old sweater,
By the base of a broken tower,
By the loom of this forgotten craft,
By the by
I make myself anew
Out of the cities of you.

And the tired sun rises and settles
In her eyes of fire
Eyes of gold
But inside me, there are only
Mirrors upon
Mirrors
With no reflection.

Letter to a ghost - II

I will put on my serious face for now.*serious face on* (stop laughing, no seriously!) 

Hello there. Being the geek that he is, a friend once told me (without me asking, of course) about how things work within a nuclear reactor. A chain reaction is caused solely by an occurrence of a matter influencing the other - leading to an overwhelming interaction that threatens to take over. And the worst thing about this whole thing is, the more you try to control these occurrences from colliding with each other, the more they insist that they must continue to do so until they go critical.

Cut to the present day. I will bother you for the millionth time, sending stupid chat messages or whatsapp memes and usually you'd reply with a short and sweet 'haha'. Like a silly house cat excited by its conquests, I want to bring everything Ive learnt, gained and won and lay it at your feet for some sort of response. I think I declared blitzkrieg and got myself bombed to stone age right at the start of knowing you.

And now. Now I'll be sitting in a house or a temporary abode belonging to a friend like any other day, laughing at some stupid joke whilst having a few beers and suddenly you'll run across my mind, prancing about as you do with a large, crazy smile on your face. And suddenly, my thoughts aren't mine anymore, they've run out of control like speedy gazelles in haphazard directions. And I'll stop laughing randomly, which leads to moments of awkward silence and everyone staring at me because I look like I'm having a stroke.

Everything is always moving way too fast. Everything often seems too rapid and frantic to catch up with. Everyone, including me - the proverbial snail racing with the bullet train of the present, is out of time. Always. But in my mind you move in slow motion. In the quick, unforgiving world of now that strikes swiftly like the sharpest blade of a ninja before receding into the shadows, I cannot seem to grasp how you slow down time when you smile. As always, the fires of my frustration are fuelled by my inability to tell you just how much you mean to me. But i stay silent, ticking away like a clock. I dont want to suck the life out of you like a wretched vine sapping the life out of a tree, wrapped around its trunk like murderous hands around someone's throat.

I miss you like a retard misses the point. Every time I look at you, I feel like writing a new poem. I want to be your friend. Sometimes more. I don't want to go on being a root in the dark, as Neruda says. I don't want to be a bridge you cross once and forget. I want to be the ferryman oaring you through troubled waters, piercing the furious waves. Like a flowery vine coiling around a tree, I want our stories to intertwine.

I want you to call me at odd hours and have me cure you of your panic attacks, when you can't seem to breathe, when you're losing your mind over your mother (who I'd like to meet very much). I want to be that constant. I want to be that anomaly. I want you with all your fears, all your scars and all your faults that made you who you are. I want you to show me your seemingly strange face in the morning so I can kiss it. I want to hold you when you feel like crying so that you can bury your head in my bony chest and do so without fear of judgement or what others might think.

I want to meet the skeletons in your closet, if there are any, and give them a bone crushing handshake. You can meet mine as well, though they are quite lame, and crush their brittle bones with a hug. I want to be your living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe in better things. Because you make me believe in good things too, just by being there and being yourself. You said the meaning of life is to give it a meaning. And you give me joy like never before. And its too vast, like the ocean that regularly swallows us. But I'd rather linger in these chambers of the sea, riding the waves. I'd rather be submerged in this blue dream than traverse through the killing desert of my life like I do.

However here is the truth in its most non poetic form: sometimes your thoughts aren't enough to sustain me or my mind. Sometimes I need to see you for I'm a wreck without you. I know this may not be enough or sufficient enough for anything. For these are just mere words on a screen, no matter how truthful they may be. This too may just be, just another letter I wrote. I once almost gave up on writing poetry and everything else with it because I thought words are useless and they don't change anything. Our actions or what we do define us, not our words. But ive been losing my mind over you and words are the only recourse i have to brave the winds of future that blow hard as ever. I just hope these don't go in vain. But they probably will. If 'one of the most beautiful letters written in the history of words' didn't impress you, i fear this certainly wont. I sometimes feel like I'm very unimpressive by default. Like all my creativity and wordplay skills are just devoid of charm or whatever it is that attracts people. Like a flame around which no moths dance, I dont think the things i say or do haunt anyone. As Nietzsche says, I don't believe in my own ghost. However, devoid of logic, I still rage with hope everyday. There's a reason why I didn't change all the 'wants' in this letter to 'wanted'. So bid adieu to silence (haven't we had enough of the same in our lives?) Talk to me. Meet me. Here. There. Or halfway in between. If I've caused hurt with my words, i hope it heals with time. The reasons can be found and named later. The negativity can be eventually hung, drawn and quartered. I apologise I became so rabid about taking up a space in your life where you seem to have forgotten you can put someone. Perhaps even someone like me. If you absolutely don't see a reason to, you can continue to be silent and I'd understand. Otherwise, I'm still here. Same old, same old.

*serious face off*

Letter to a ghost - I

‘Tacenda’ - are you familiar with this word? It’s funny how the most interesting words (such as Kalopsia – look it up!) never get used regularly. One would think that in the entire history of the English language, people would be tired of using the same old run of the mill words to express themselves or their state of being. Yet we go on, never tampering with the evidence that suggests just how uninspired we can be when it comes to expressing ourselves with flavour or joy. Anyway, apologies, I tend to digress (quite often) – ‘tacenda’ means ‘things better left unsaid; or matters to be passed over in silence’.

Now I am not a user of the same, but I believe silence is the overrated enemy. I hate silence. Don’t get me wrong, silence of the mountains can be serene and silence of the ocean, blissful, but then again to be completely quiet as a person signifies silently dying to me. Man may not always be a social animal but in my opinion, one should never become a silent beast. Death of words, of beautiful, lovely, joyous, emotional, burning, awe-inspiring words and non-existence of the same in language is a death like no other. I believe silence, like inaction, is perhaps the most violent thing we can express as humans.

I’ve also never believed in the concept of the one. Because to me, the whole theory of ‘the one’ or just the plain idea of it is evil and demeaning to us as a person –basically telling us that we are not complete and won’t be until we find a special person for ourselves. Even though a companionship like that (or anything close to it) is a beautiful thing and we must never let it go if we are lucky enough to chance upon such an occurrence. But if we’re not, it’s certainly not the end of the world. People make these huge promises to themselves and build up an image of a person that doesn’t exist anywhere but in their own head. And then when someone normal or regular does happen to wander into their life like any other person, he or she just gets side-lined.

I’ve felt like that person for a long time. That I wander off in people’s lives, like an extra character that mistakenly walks into the wrong set, apologises for his awkward behaviour, waves and leaves. 

However, these days I find myself thinking about how it would be to kiss your forehead. I imagine you laughing in my head (with your head bowed down, convulsing like you’ve been administered shock therapy) and think it would be so nice to hold your small, thin hands. Sometimes I imagine holding the tender frame of your body and immediately being to feel warm inside (and sometimes I get goose bumps). I feel all eloquent words and ways of expressing myself fall short of the craziness that ensues when we sit down to talk, and I often wish you were more than mere messages on my phone or laptop screen (even though it is enough to put a large smile on my silly face on cold nights).

I felt stupid about coming up to you for the first time. You dissolved into the room so effortlessly, I could still feel eyes on you, for you looked beautiful that night and in all the other moments henceforth. And how easy it’s all been since then, to make insane plans, to walk around roads that lead to happiness. To talk about serious issues – about life and love and death and things we cannot untie. How I think I fell for you a little bit more when you told me you took your mother out for shopping and when you sent me her smiling pictures. And how I felt so happy when you texted and told me that you missed talking to me (I think I did a little dance).

And now, now the world doesn’t feel colder, chaotic or fucked up. I think you bring about that change in people, whoever it is whose life you’ve touched has been the better for it. And meeting you doesn’t feel like a consequence. Season often don’t make sense but meeting someone as lovely and special as you certainly does. I find myself walking a road from work or around my colony running an errand and before I know it, you’ve raided my mind and I’m traversing through time and space with a large, stupid smile that I cannot hide. The little that I’ve gotten to know you, I feel like I knew it all along, that I knew you all along, all my life, to be precise. And I don’t want to just let go and lose you in an oblivion of people and the relentless crowd that occupied our city – that shall surely massacre this bond. It’s never been this relaxed, non-painful and devoid of any sarcasm or drama as it is with you.

I’ve tossed and turned and have been stripped and burned in relationships that have for most part, made me a better person (I think) and given me quite a good ability to detect bullshit (though I still often buy it!) and sometimes I don’t know what to do with all this knowledge, it seems to be a waste of time as I often thought I’d never get to apply it anywhere and just accepted for the longest time that I’m going to be alone and made my peace with it too. Since you walked in, I always wish to spend every waking moment with you. I know sometimes I can be overbearing with messages and phonecalls and constantly wanting to stay in touch but this is just who I am, although I apologise for any irritation I may have caused. I keep checking my phone thinking you might have messaged, and it fills me with happiness to see the tiny whatsapp logo in the upper left hand corner of the screen like never before. I’ve stopped dreaming about perfect endings or the ‘one’. I don’t want to live life as a dream, I’d rather take it with all its imperfections and heartbreaks – they make us appreciate the good things like never before. I’d rather walk with you holding hands through busy and crowded streets and laugh like I never do with others and to make you laugh the same way.

To borrow from Walt Whitman’s words, we are here so we may contribute a verse. And the one you bring about in my life is full of joy. I'm tired of writing, listening to as well as living sad songs. I'd rather take your happy eyes and smiling lips, your youthful laughter, your spinning, curling fingers and shiny, small, pointy teeth and carry them with me wherever I go than hum through the images of the past as if they define me and make me who I am. I have been a wall too long and you're the biggest open window with the brightest, greenest view I’ve ever seen. There is nothing I wouldn't want to do with you, there is nothing that you can say to me that'd be too weird and there's nothing that you can ask of me that I shall not partake in.

To be honest, all this sounds quite selfish, I don’t know if you have time in your life for another person. Specially someone like me (a mass of neurotic nerves and crazy behaviour coupled with hyperactivity). I don’t know if you want to give a part of yourself away when you have your mother, sister, aunt and uncle as well as many cousins all scattered across our crazy country. However, I can promise you – and this I know – that I’d never let you down and disappoint you or willingly cause hurt – I’d rather walk away from that than indulge in any of the above. This may all seem and sound shocking and way too soon, but I didn’t want to wait any longer. I want to be with you and get to know you, all your failures and your many, many successes; things you have gained and those you’ve lost. Things that touch you and go and things that stay. What makes you bug eyed and what makes you mellow. If you laugh under the sheets and if you hide behind the curtains. Do you close your eyes tightly when you eat something spicy? Do you sing to yourself when you walk alone? I want to know it all and like a mountain, climb to the top with you and revel in the view.

So to sum it up, I’m mental about you. If I could, I’d spend some time with you every day because I miss you when you’re not around and its strange how that is happening already, when I haven’t even met you all that much or for too long. I’ve been going quite insane in the last few days and I just have to know if there’s just a slight chance you would want to spend your days with me. I didn’t want to let any of my thoughts about you to ‘pass over in silence or go unsaid’. Hence the extremely long letter. I just hope my confession doesn’t freak you out or anger you in any way. Its just the plain old simple truth.

(Apologies for the length, like I said in the first paragraph – I tend to digress!)

Trickle

I have no recourse for the winds of future
Where the embrace of arms
Is closer than France.
Where doused, like leaves in a pond,
we swim freely over voices of youth
that can’t explain love
like knots they can’t untie, undo.

I’ve no remorse for the loss of time
I set sail with my paper boats each day
Into the corners of her mind
Hanging to the corners of her lips
And swinging from the corners of her chin
Till I, myself, am cornered.

But she runs and lies
Between words and whispers
Between timing and silence
And I exist in the space
Between her eyes
Between her lips as they part
To utter fiery words
Or I lie in dried shades with dust of time
Finally, I find her.

Like the winding road inside of me
That leads to laughter and madness
Madness of a holiday where you forget age
One day I’ll forsake you
Like the stolen moon
In a sparrow’s eye
And carry your laughter
Buried deep in the forest of me.

Take me like the pages of a book
You read when you were young
See me as a door
If you don’t know me yet as a
Wall left bare
With an open window.

Half baked

Dripping from my rain cloud
Are ungentle words
Walking without an umbrella
I am soaked in curses and things
I wrote at the back of my high school notebooks
I am scratching my past on a green blackboard
Wishing it'd spell some truth.

Words weigh heavy on the mind
I was a font in lower case and you, a case of missing letters I tried to find
I gave her a needle and became a thread
That went through and she
Pushed and pulled and pushed and pulled
And in that
Pushing and pulling, of my knots and stitches,
I sometimes forgot to see myself as an old sweater coming undone
And turned into an old shoe box to put your memories into
She said I saved too much.

Now words weigh heavy on the mind
And love bears a resemblance to everything unkind
With her mouth poised but closed
She always used her fingers to speak
Her fists to write and her eyes to sing.

Now there is only silence that sleeps besides me in my bed
The grassy park of romance is now a parking lot
And I’m known to vanish or only fire blanks
Like giant tanks without ammunition
I stand here wishing the wall could punch me back.

But words weigh heavy on the mind
And love bears a resemblance to everything I wanted to find
With her face closed she lay with silent eyes
On the bed I made
With weapons drawn she said"You must be unkind"
"Unkind?" I asked
Yes, unkind. To be and survive.

I turned away like a grain of sand
And slept with a dream of the sea.

And rose above the tides to say,Give me an ocean of waves
Not a dead sea where I float lifeless
For I am a mellow ghost haunting no one
Be true to the wind and trust the shores I've been
Tossing and turning with your tides
Let me swim within you
Don’t be calm
Speak like a storm
Sing like a swarm of birds
Gathered above the rolling waves
And know you will find me washed
But unchanged.

Fires

I'm words for hire

But my eyes are tired

And my voice is gone.

I've burned bridges

But I don't set fires

Just to see how

High the flames would go.

May

May you be the season
That autumn loves to loathe.
May you be the reason
For clouds to part and pour.

May you be the answer

For all minds to wander free.
May you be the river
That quenches every tree.

May you be the tale

Of a thousand gleeful faces
May you be a poem
Found in hidden, tender places.

May you have wings

That teach you how to soar
May you win all fights with peace
And never keep a score.

May you be the eternal flame

That burns from within
May you find an ocean inside
May you learn to swim.

Maps

Stay where you are

I've no maps for your eyes

No directions whatsoever for your body

And while our waves intertwine

I only wish to caress the sand

Of your skin

But stay where you are

Sometimes I think

You're better from a distance

For distance

Doesn't let me see

You going smoother with time

Washed like rocks by the sea

And I walk through your silence to say,

“The night is but a river,

Flowing from your eyes.”

Stay where you are

Tangled in the morning

Like your hair at noon

In the unruly wind

Where you trudge closer

On haunted rides

Through razor sharp tales

Hiding from thirsty beaks of crows

And as your neck becomes the road

That lays out shining before me

Where I go dancing in circles,

Let my whispers treat you well

Stay where you are

Or be here now

Open window

Sometimes

The afternoon

Sleeps like a lazy dog

By my window

Hiding from the sun

And while in the shade,

You remain a beautiful ghost

I sound like a stone unturned.

Mumbling to myself beneath the surface

Becoming an island

Drifting like a tale

Away from your stories

Over evenings stretched out into

Secret promises of the rain

Where doused, we make our way

Out of clothes, and

Into words

Fleeting like deadwood

Above conversations of smoke

That fly out of the window

I forgot to close.

The Moth

In her eyes

In her endless eyes

In her gentle, warm, endless eyes

Like the darkening sky

Lie sleeping galaxies, waterfalls

The moon itself.

Like her warmth, that haunts me still

She whispers to me sometimes

Between the sheets

Of an empty bed

Where she gathered me at dawn

And lay me down at night.

In cold of the night, where my will breaks again

The galaxies and stars are dying

The steel of words, melting

The broken string of her instrument

That rings no more.

So I recede

In her eyes

In her endless eyes

In her gentle, warm, endless eyes

Not merely a moth content with reaching the flame

I must dance with it, too.

Reflections in the Dark

It’s July

The roof of the sky is falling

And the storm in your arms

Has kept me away

But through the pages

Of a memory set on fire

I remember you

Like a tree wrapped in light

Wading through

The darkest forest.

I’ve learnt silence is

Closer than we think

Like the ocean at my feet

Or the people standing still

Like weather beaten mannequins

And that I only sing to myself

As your flame dances

Above me

And my words melt away.

I still recall the red shore

Of your lips

And that green gate through which

You made your way

To watch a gentle river flow

And birds with their flame

Melt me to my bones.

But oh my evening moon

My midnight flower

As forever departs and future beckons

Know you were always well clothed

In garbs of light

And I was always

Naked in your presence.

Tired Gamble

In the gamble of everyday

Between what is lost and what is left

I was washed with your flame

Summoned by your voice

And taken by your hunger

But now your words are a trickle

From a broken ceiling.

I was woven

In your story

Lonely as a room

Empty as a house

Made into a home, and

Now I’m a shore

Where the waves only recede.

I’m tired of writing you

Like a road

That goes nowhere

 I’m weakened by singing

You like a song

That you can’t hear.

Lose

I must lose it all.

I must lose because I don’t have anything hard or ugly or cold or bitter inside. I don’t have a struggle. I was born in a simple family to loving parents. I was bound for normalcy. But what is normal? Is it a fence we build for ourselves or a wall others raise around us? I think it’d be best to call it a state of motionlessness. Of not going anywhere. Like trying to swim in an ocean with no waves. Or maybe that’s what our indecisive brains try and tell us – to move away from the comfort we burrow ourselves in. however, like the roots of an old tree, our beliefs fasten themselves into a ripe ground of youth and age till they’re too rigid to change.

The only thing I've ever learnt from life and love is that sometimes we should close our mouths but we should never close our eyes.

Now I rage without a reason. I burn without a flame. My voices have no words anymore.

I must lose it all.

The Tides

Will the river meet the ocean tide?

Where the mountains end and the sun does hide?

To forget and float away like a stringless kite

Is what I often wish to do.

To see the world in her eyes through sunlight beams

To never question these threads merging into tender seams

As night turns to day and a blue evening leans

My arms are doors that lie open for you.

Today, I wish to fly like birds that brave the wind

To be naked and shed this dying skin

Even though they oft meander, my thoughts are pinned

To a wall of words I raised and drew.

And yet, I arrive only as a letter

Only to be gagged, bound and tethered

Yellowed, unopened and set upon a table

Weather beaten and never to be read.

So find me a place where my bones can rest

In the rising tides, I was summoned by your zest

Now I tremble as you remove your dress

But I’ll hold you close like the words you've said.

*photo by Pranita Kocharekar*